Bring everything to God

But make sure you bring Him the important stuff

My Sunday school class began a study this week on prayer. The study is by Alistair Begg who happens to be one of my favorite teaching pastors (plus, he is originally from Scottland and has an awesome accent). I digress, sorry. The study is four weeks long and we have just finished week one and it has already helped me refocus my prayer life.

Pastor Begg’s main point is that we must always remember to bring the truly important things to God - the truly important things. He in no way denies that we are to bring everything to God and, to that point, he quotes Philippians 4:6

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.¹

But he emphasizes we must not forget to bring Him the important things. He states “All that matters may be brought before God, but what we bring before God is not always what matters most”. In other words, we bring a lot of stuff to God in our prayers (again, nothing wrong with that); however, we often don’t bring to him the things that matter most.

He states that the overwhelming amount of prayers people talk about focuses on health issues, followed by financial issues, family issues, etc. Based on my experience, as well as experiences I have with friends, I would tend to agree with his statement. Let’s call these types of prayers ‘practical’. Way down this list, more often than not, are prayers of a spiritual nature. For example, praying for someone’s salvation, praying for something to bring glory to God, praying for God’s will to be done, praying for God’s guidance, etc.

Yet, if you look throughout the Bible, praying for someone’s health is almost non-existent. There is a reason for that, and that is because the prayers in the Bible are focused on spiritual matters - and that makes perfect sense when you begin to look at things from a big picture and futuristic point of view. I am going to quote directly from the lesson plan here:

You have been raised with Christ into the heavenly places, been made part of a family that will never come to an end. One day, you will live in a new heaven and a new earth, see your God face to face and, with a heart no longer burdened and distracted by sin and a body no longer broken and decaying in frailty, you will praise Him. And you and I just want to pray we’d be healthy and live long?

When our hearts are opened to our future, it changes our lives now - it reorders our priorities and our prayers.

Here is a great question from the lesson, “What percentage of your praying would you say focuses on spiritual matters?” Maybe that percentage needs to increase. Maybe your prayers need to be more focused on God and His kingdom than on practical matters.

I want to repeat something, so the point of this post is not misunderstood. God calls us to bring everything to Him, to be totally dependent on Him. We are supposed to pray to God regarding practical matters; however, we need to make sure we bring the critical spiritual matters to Him as well.

Eternity is a long time. What grade your son received in science will not matter four billion years from now. In forty-thousand years you probably won’t even remember that new job you must get. And four hundred years from now it won’t matter if Aunt Mildred survived the disease she is currently fighting.

What will matter is if your child believed in and trusted in Christ. What will matter at the new job - or the old one for that matter - you impacted people’s lives and brought glory to God. What will matter is if you loved Aunt Mildred as Jesus taught us to love.

Look at how you are praying - bring everything to God - but please, make sure you bring the important things to Him too.

“All that matters may be brought before God, but what we bring before God is not always what matters most”.

1. This is the NLT translation, my favorite translation of this verse from Paul.